Jeffrey Sachs: the West’s false narrative about Russia and China
jeffsachs.org
jeffsachs.org
> In 2022, he appeared twice on one of Russia government-funded top-rated shows, hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, to call for Ukraine to negotiate and step away from its "maximalist demands" of removing Russia from Ukrainian territory,[73] for which he was criticised by the Wall Street Journal.[74]
> In 2023, he blamed the United States for its supposed role in the Russo-Ukrainian War, claiming it "wrongly conspired" in the "overthrow" of president Viktor Yanukovych in the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, and then pushed "NATO enlargement to encircle Russia."[75][non-primary source needed]
> Sachs has suggested that the U.S. was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. In February 2023, he was invited by the Russian government to address the United Nations Security Council about the topic.[76][26]
It simply is not the case, and we've shown with both China and Russia that authoritarian strongmen will only ever see capitulation and appeasement as weakness and an opportunity to be exploited.
It's not just Putin. Every Russian president hated NATO expansion. Boris Yeltsin angrily withdrew from treaties when NATO expanded, having protested it all the way [2]. And Boris Yeltsin did so much of US bidding that he was effectively a Manchurian Candidate [3] [4] [5] but that still wasn't enough for the USA, they told him to go pound sand with regard to NATO expansion. Medvedev invaded Georgia in 2008, when its president started making moves to get into NATO. Replace Putin, and you'll very likely get a bigger hawk in Russia. The same works in USA ... after Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ went on a bombing spree in south Asia, bombing Laos more than any country has ever been bombed [6], in a secret "special military operation" that killed huge numbers of people 3000 miles away, motivated by the "domino theory" of stopping Communism (similar to "denazification", except it was half a planet away and literally presented no threat to USA).
Recall also that Putin and Russia did everything they could within the law to protest and try to prevent the US invasion of Iraq. Putin was the first to call George W Bush after 9/11 and offered support and joint counter-terrorism activities, which they did do. And yet it was George W Bush who pushed for Ukraine and Georgia to be in NATO, in 2008 [7] even though the population of Ukraine did NOT want to be in NATO [8]
NATO expansion to China now is just continuing more of the same. You can see it in real-time now. USA already has economic inter-dependency with China. What we the people have to do (in USA and China and Russia) is require our politicians to record all their negotiations on video, and we will then be able to see how our public servants fail us, before it is too late. It will create an incentive to act in good faith, like bodycams for cops. ("Oops, sorry, all our cameras malfunctioned that day" would be extremely suspicious.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_independence_precedent
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr...
[4] https://archive.org/details/TimeUSMeddlingOnRussia
[5] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how...
[6] https://www.history.com/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietna...
[7] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-ukraine-bush/bush-vo...
[8] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-n...
Of course Russia and Russian presidents hate NATO, it stops them conducting imperialistic wars against the countries that they wish to subjugate.
No one should care what Russia thinks, it's clear not allowing countries like Georgia and Ukraine into NATO just causes Russia to invade them anyway.